Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Summer, a friend cherished for it’s boundless life and warmth, falters and falls behind. Even knowing it is the way of nature, one can’t help but to look back, hope becoming resignation to the turning of the seasons.
(modified portrait format…almost square)
Una is sitting on her haunches (that posture that seems to say, “You have hands? Big deal… betcha I’ll respond more positively to surprises than you and your hands”) in the lower left corner of the photo. If she were in front of you as you sat on your couch, her left foreleg would be pressing against your left shin.
Una is sitting on the globel-warming-green grass between me and my camera and her garden, in our backyard.
Her face is in profile, so there is the triangular black silhouette of her head and muzzle at the right top of the black rounded-triangle of her body. Her front legs are two sable uprights, twin fulcra to launch her into action should the need arise.
The upper half of the photo is a view of the garden. Nearest Una is the ‘A’ section of the garden where the celery still reach upward, desperate for salvation. Behind them are the stalks of corn that are still standing, the perfect symbol of New England autumn. They are collectively-angular and a lifeless light brown. They huddle together, clumps of the dying standing amid the flattened carpet of the dead that cover the formerly life-giving ground on either side. Very non-human, they are not malevolent as much as they are careless (devoid of the slightest sharing of feelings, the ultimate of unconcerned bystander). If God decided to kill all the angels in heaven, I believe the aftermath would look like this.
oh kay lets get back to Una!
Una, while sitting on the alert, has a cautious forward lean, that manages to convey a certain sadness at the scene behind her. Being a dog she does not regret the dying of the garden. Being a dog she accepts that the garden is now a different thing, a different place in her world.
I’m beginning to think that Summer is over. Not entirely because of the weather, which in the last week or two has been early-Septemberish in character. I’m beginning to think that Summer is over because it’s starting to get dark at, like, 3:00 pm (and we’re still on DST!). Given that our house is in the middle of a pine wood (photo below) which means our horizon is approximately 45 degrees up from ‘over there’, the sun sets early anyway. I suspect there is something more fundamental going on than mere temperature and light; the days are getting shorter. Doesn’t take a metaphysician to extrapolate that observation into something useful…to a clark. (lol)
‘The view from my writing place.’
This is a photo of squares and anti-squares. It is in landscape format. Filling the frame are two double-hung windows. Through and beyond the windows are pine trees.
The windows are comprised of four square panes of glass. We see that they are two windows because the dark wood that divides them on the vertical is twice as wide as the dark word that divides them on the horizontal. We recognize them as two windows because there are two white borders running from top-to-bottom on either side of these windows. These are white curtains. The innermost edge of the curtains show in silhouette like the decorative frosting around the top edge of a round cake.
In the lower left of the photo we see three-quarters of a square of my computer monitor. On the screen we can just make out the squares of the windows open on the display. It’s all about the squares with this here photo here.
It’s beyond the glass that we leave the land of squares and have to deal with anti-squares. The pine trees fill the scene from top to bottom, except for the far left, upper corner where white clouds against a blue sky shows due to the fact that the trees on that side of the scene, while just as tall, if not taller than the trees in the center and right, are farther away.
The telephone-pole trunks of the trees show as shy dark lines wherever the branches of green pine needles are not. Just when you think the branches are running on a horizontal, they bend upwards in tight clumps. Really kind of scottian trees. They grow very fast, they don’t go away in the winter, keeping green and rustlely in the middle of a damn blizzard and though they are taller than anything else around, they’re always having limbs break off. But even then, they don’t slow down, just keep growing.
lol…scottian trees.
Hey! Quick Grat Item… lets call it… Number 7 any scotts reading this should find a way to head south, even if only for a short visit. As a people, they are way prone to seasonal affective disorder. It doesn’t take much, just some extra sunlight to break the soul-crushing effects of approaching winter.
Ok… to get back to the topic, Josie Two Shoes works hard enough every week getting this train rolling, we shouldn’t make it more difficult by increasing the likelihood she’ll have to contend with messages, “I love the idea of sharing the parts of our lives that we feel grateful for and especially appreciate the orderly format asking for (up to) Ten Things of Thankful. Knowing that others feel the same goes a long way to making this a joyful exercise, not a chore at all. It’s a pleasure come and read the others… what is it with those Waynesville Doctrine people? Are they doing that on purpose or what? I mean, come on! How difficult is it to write ten numbers in sequence?”
On with the show.
Una and Phyllis start this week’s post at Items 1) and 2). Una does not mind winter’s cold, but, if truth be told, she not a big fan of snow. Sure, she runs through it and has fun but, our Chodský pes* prefers dry to wet and once you come in the house, wet follows snow like
Combined (1 & 2 cont’d): Phyllis and Una on google. Type ‘chodsky pes’ into the google search, click on images and you can see a photo of: Una as a very young puppy on the couch or…. Phyllis and Una in bed. (photo below, in case you don’t want to scroll through excessive canine cuteness).
‘Not yet entirely comfortable with the paparazzi’
Items 3-5 the bloghops out there in the ‘sphere. They are a critical element not only in my enjoyment of this place, but in the development of writerly skills:
- Finish the Sentence Friday (with Kristi and them) Hey! I just remembered, Kristi said I could do a FTSF with her on the 9th of November! how cool would that be?
- Six Sentence Story (zoe and Joules)
- TToT (Josie Two Shoes)
These blogs are excellent illustrations of why (and how) the virtual world has cable TV beat, hands down.
6) the Wakefield Doctrine: because with it, I can see more than one path and…and! with an understanding of its principles, I can know more about other person than they know themselves!*
8) Sunday Supplement These Bounties for which we gratefully labor:
‘Mother’s Natures Vitamins and Swizzle sticks.’
9) ‘Open Mic Item’ Got a Grat, not yet comfortable doing a whole post but still feel good about this one thing (or person or place)? Send it in as a Comment and I’ll put it right here at Number 9
10) Secret Rule 1.3
(talk about your ‘Way Back Machine’!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy8ba2eL7cI
Click on the photo and join us at the ‘hop
* unless, of course, they’re also students of our little personality theory….
